Epiphany III, Sunday 26th January, by Fr Jack

Nehemiah 8. 1-3, 5,6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12. 12-31a
St Luke 4. 14-21

 

Todays’s first lesson comes from the Book of Nehemiah. To some extent it continues the theological themes of last Sunday’s Gospel - the feasting Jesus facilitates at the wedding at Cana. Here too (five centuries before Christ) God is commanding His people to feast, to rejoice. To feast is not sinful, overindulgent, or frivolous, it is part of our calling as God’s people. It is us responding truthfully to the wonderful gift that God has given us, that is to say: life.  

We feast, mindful of those who have not, yes, praying for those who cannot, yes, but we do feast. 

After all, as Christians we are a people defined by Eucharist. ‘Eucharist’ means ‘thanksgiving’. Every Eucharist (even quiet midweek celebrations with just one or two people in the Lady Chapel) is a divine feast. At every Eucharist we foretaste heaven’s banquet. 

In this way feasting is who we are. Jesus shows us this (at Cana last Sunday) and in how much time of His earthly ministry He spends dining with those He meets. And today we go way back to Nehemiah as he commands God’s people to feast, those who have prepared, and those who have not - all are welcome. Just as Jesus, five centuries later, will tell parables resonating with the same invitation: come, the wafes and strays, come to the King’s feast. 

Where are you in this picture? Feasting? Outside? With Jesus? Waiting for Him to call?

Today in the Gospel Jesus speaks the words of the Prophet Isaiah eight centuries before, setting out God’s priorities (the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed) . God speaks of restoration and liberation, and in this theological context of feasting, we might say, all are invited to the feast of the Kingdom, and nothing (including poverty or infirmity or imprisonment - irreparable barriers in the time of Jesus) will be allowed to get in the way. 

But we’ve already got ahead of ourselves. Let’s track back and join up some of these dots.

Nehemiah, today’s first lesson, is five centuries before Christ. It is the time of the Exile. The Jews have been rounded up and taken to Babylon as slaves of the emperor. Their historic lands, their temple, their communities all gone. ‘By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept’. 

But during this period of exile, Nehemiah arises as an Israelite in the service of the Babylonian emperor Artaxerxes; his cup bearer in fact, a close personal servant. And Nehemiah gets himself put in charge of Jerusalem - he becomes Governor of Judah. He sets about rebuilding the walls of the Holy City, and restores the life of God’s people, and the Temple. Go home and read Nehemiah in the Old Testament. It is a wonderful text full of colour and life. 

Today’s snippet is a great moment of restoration and revelation: the priest Ezra stands in the Water Gate, on the eastern wall of Jerusalem, just down from the Mount of Olives, and reads this great joyful commandment to feast. I suspect the lectionary sets it for today in this season of Epiphany (of revealing) because it is a moment of revelation: the people who have been in exile and shrouded in darkness are back in Jerusalem, hearing the words of the Torah, and worshipping the Living God, and we’re told they understand the significance of all this. They get it. All the confusion and estrangement of exile is over, and now everything is aligned, fallen into place: Law and Temple, God and people. A moment of Epiphany, fulfilment and home coming. 

But we know it’s not that simple. It’s not yet ‘happily ever after’. We know that the Old Testament is a long catalogue of disaster: of people drifting from God, disaster ensuing, people panic and return to God, it all goes ok, then people drift from God again, and repeat… From Adam until now, that is the human story: our goldfish memory, God’s faithfulness. 

And in this way the Old Testament is a pretty good mirror for our reality now. Looking at our world today, the political and social crises all around us.

Jerusalem feasting under Nehemiah is not the end of the story. There is plenty more woe to come, but not just despite that, but almost because of that, they, we feast. We feast in the face of disaster, death and inhumanity, because we know that by our feasting here in the Kingdom of the Risen Lord, we live towards an end to these disasters, dragging the world towards the feast that will never end.

Today, the priest Ezra proclaims (and all of us can hear and understand!) “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and [generously] send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus stands in the Synagogue and His proclamation of the Kingdom, and list of priorities resounds with the same lavish invitation. 

Let’s draw this together, and then I have one last point to make.

In Nehemiah, and the story of ancient Israel, and in Jesus and the Kingdom He brings, we see the same hallmarks of God at work, and those same realties echo in us as we hear these Scriptures and share the Eucharist. We find an honesty about human history and the human condition. But despite, and indeed because of that frailty, we have even greater reason to feast: because of the inestimable gift of the resurrection life, of the coming Kingdom, into which we feast, into which we live more and more and more. To feast with Christ in the Eucharist is to be transformed by grace, and thereby to change the world, even just one heart at a time.

And this is were I neatly (sort of) segway into my final point…

This weekend is the conclusion of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. We know that the Church today and historically has been beset by the sin of division. We used to burn each other alive, now we just argue and blow hot air. This is, of course, self defeating. Because we are called to feast, as today’s Scriptures say: to worship and feast together, so says Ezra and Nehemiah, Christ and Isaiah, and St Paul. In today’s second lesson he spells out so clearly the gift of difference in the church. Diversity in unity in his wonderful body analogy - the hand, eye and ear being a gift one to another. Each incomplete without the other. 

Seen this way, no part of the Church is ‘complete’ or ‘correct’, because we are made whole only by our difference and togetherness. In a moment we will confess faith in the Catholic Church in the words of the Creed. Not the Roman Catholic Church, but the Universal Church. The kata holos in Greek (Catholic) which literally means according to the whole. So unless we belong to the wholeness, the whole is not whole without us. This is not a language or theology of conformity, but of wholeness. Just as the Three Persons of the Trinity are one in their unity of diversity, their particularity and their personhood, one in love and being. As people here in St Giles’, as a diocese, as the C of E and Anglican Communion, and as the universal Holy Catholic Church worldwide, we are not ourselves, unless we are all here, together, ‘according to the whole’. Not uniform, but united. Not divergent, but diverse: hands, and eyes and feet. So we give thanks today for the gifts our brothers and sisters who are not like us, give to us, by being with us at Jesus’ feast. 

Forgive me if I’ve tried to cover too much ground today. It is rich meat. But perhaps to sum it all up in one line: friends, we have been invited to a party, by which we, the church and the whole world are invited to taste heaven together and be transformed.